Matthew Singer

Fifty years ago this week the fall of Saigon brought the Vietnam War to an end. We all know it best from the movies. And while it’s usually the winners who get to tell the story of a war, Hollywood’s primacy gives Vietnam’s filmography an American flavour – from valorising propaganda flick like The Green Berets to war-is-hell slaughterfests like Hamburger Hill, via a host of homecoming dramas like The Deer Hunter and Born on the Fourth of July. The Vietnamese have their own equivalents, though, and films like The Girl From Hanoi capture the country’s harrowing experiences. But which films really get the conflict? We asked military historian Professor Geoffrey Wawro, author of acclaimed account The Vietnam War, to rank the most accurate depictions of the conflict. ‘The canon of Vietnam films gives us a lot of different views on the conflict,’ he tells us. So is the Vietnam war movie a thing of the past? ‘Well, no one expected Spike Lee to take up the story [with 2020’s Da 5 Bloods],’ he adds, ‘but he saw an interesting angle to pursue and made a great movie. Vietnam is a useful device for talking about the arrogance and blindness of power.’ Recommended:  📽️ The 50 best war movies ever made🪖 The 50 best World War II movies🎖️ World War I films ranked by historical accuracy

Great movies matter. Movies have the capacity to sharpen our understanding of the world. They take us places we’d otherwise never go, and introduce us to people we’d otherwise never meet. Or they reflect our own lives back at us, and help us understand ourselves a little better. They simply allow us to place reality on pause for a few hours, which, in this day and age, should not be discounted. Thankfully, there are signs that movies still do matter, even for a generation that’s grown up watching them mostly through the television, like Letterboxd, or the growing popularity of repertory cinemas. And that is ultimately what compels us to list the greatest films of all-time. It’s not to assert our own canon, or spark quibbles about snubs and arbitrary rankings. It’s because new film fans are still being born every day, and need a place to start. So consider this a road map. Jump to list: 100-91 |  90-81 | 80-71 | 70-61 | 60-51 | 50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-1 How we chose our 100 best movies of all time Admittedly, the process is not an exact science. Mostly, it involves a bunch of arguing, whittling and deal-making amongst Time Out’s most movie-obsessed writers, and then voila: a top 100 everyone is kinda sorta happy about! In terms of why we chose what we chose, that’s just as messy and multivarious. Sometimes, it’s for historical achievements, either technically or thematically. Other times, it’s simple obviousness: are you really not going to have The Godfather and Ci

Laughs have been a touch thin on the ground at the cinema so far this year – the only corpsing allowed during awards season was by the pope in Conclave – but prepare your facial muscles because the big lols are coming. The new trailer for Naked Gun, showcasing Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr, teases a proper studio comedy – the first in ages – and the pairing of Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in bromance-gone-wrong comedy Friendship looks likely to give our funny bones a good whack. Of course, laughter is the best medicine – apart from actual medicine – and there’s already been a few movies and streaming shows with real healing power, from a classic Bridget Jones outing to a blast of Minecraft excess. If you’re looking for a good laugh, we prescribe one of the following. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

Outside of a few box-office smashes, 2024 was a relatively quiet year for movies, full of fascinating breakouts and leftfield successes, but few major events. But 2025 is shaping up a bit differently. While it’s still hard to spot another #Barbenheimer on the horizon, or even a Deadpool and Wolverine, the calendar is loaded with the return of monolithic franchises like Avatar, Mission: Impossible and Jurassic World and a few monolithic auteurs, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Bong Joon-ho, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh. Shoot, we might even get a Terrence Malick movie this year. Of course, the most exciting thing going into every year are the films you never see coming. Will we get another The Substance or Nickel Boys? Who knows? But that’s why we keep watching – and you can follow along with our ever-growing list of the best movies of the year below. RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)🔥 The must-see films for 2025 you can't miss🎥 The 101 greatest films ever made

When it comes to TV shows, Disney+ is known for three things: Marvel, Star Wars and kids shows. But there’s much more on the streaming service than that. Granted, those are the platform’s three main tentpoles – it’s the place you got to find the new season of Andor, the revived Daredevil and the episodes of Bluey that help you survive as a parent. Given Disney’s juggernaut status, though, it also has everything from the Muppets to the Beatles to Goosebumps. Whether you’re a child, the parent of one or simply a child at heart, you’ll find something to binge. Here are the shows most worth your time. Recommended: 🇭 The best shows to watch on Hulu right now😏 The best shows to watch on Prime Video right now🍎 The best shows to watch on Apple TV+🇳 The best Netflix original series to binge🗓 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)📺 The 101 best TV shows of all-time

タイムアウト東京 > 映画 > カルト映画の名作15選 誰も最初からカルト作品を作ろうとは思わない。まあ、デヴィッド・リンチやアレハンドロ・ホドロフスキー、そしてジョン・ウォーターズは例外かもしれないが。 脚本を仕上げ、キャスティングや監督だけでなく、資金調達などもして、撮影までこぎつけるような手間をかける以上、作家魂の奥底では常識破りのヒット作になることを密かに願っているものだ。とは言っても、最高の結果がカルト映画の枠に落ち着くこと、というケースがほとんどなのだが……。映画に限らずだが、芸術にとっては「カルト」の枠に入っただけでも、いいことと考えるべきだろう。実際、この言葉の意味が広く理解されるにつれ、多くの作り手がそれを名誉の印のように誇るようになった。 さて、本リストを作る上で問題になるのは、「カルト映画とは一体何か」ということ。これを定義するのは決して容易ではないが、一つ確かなのは、それが「ファンの熱狂的な情熱により、公開時をはるかに超える収益を後から生み出した映画」であるということだ。 ここでは、タイムアウトワールドワイドが選んだ作品を紹介。原文では40作品紹介されているので気になった人はチェックしてほしい。 関連記事『映画史上最高のベストセックスシーン50』『クエンティン・タランティーノ映画、全作品ランキング』

Cinemagoers love a good scare. That much is evident these days from the commercial and critical success of the horror genre: in 2024, some of the biggest, buzziest movies of the year – Longlegs, The Substance, Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu and the box-office shocker Terrifier 3, to name just four – were designed to scare. And that’s not even to mention leftfield smashes over the last decade, like A Quiet Place, Hereditary and basically everything Jordan Peele has done.   It’s crazy to think, then, that not long ago, horror was thought of as a euphemism for ‘schlock’. If you were alive at the height of the VHS era, you know it wasn’t totally unfounded. Churning out formulaic slashers became a way for hacks and hucksters to make a quick buck, leaving rental store shelves awash in forgettable dreck. It served to overwhelm and obscure the horror genre’s true value – because when done right, no other film experience can conjure more visceral emotions. So let’s correct the record. Here are the 100 greatest horror movies of all-time, drawn from both the current renaissance and those darker days. Written by Tom Huddleston, Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Nigel Floyd, Phil de Semlyen, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkopf, Nigel Floyd, Andy Kryza, Alim Kheraj and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🔪 The best new horror movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🤡 The 21 best Stephen King movies of all time🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

Movies always find a way. It’s no secret the 21st century has so far been rough on cinema, between internet piracy, the pandemic, the strikes, the rise of streaming, etc. But while movies may no longer exist at the center of culture, over the first two decades of the new millennium, filmmakers have innovated at a more rapid clip than ever before: genres have been mixed, matched and completely exploded; more diverse stories are being told; blockbusters have reached unfathomable hugeness, and the smallest, strangest indies have won awards and reached vast audiences.  If cinema in the 21st century has been defined by tumult, it’s also exemplified the ability of those most dedicated to the medium to rise to the moment. These 100 movies represent the best of the last quarter-century so far. Written by David Fear, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich, Stephen Garrett, Andrew Grant, Aaron Hillis, Tom Huddleston, Alim Kheraj, Tomris Laffly, Kevin B. Lee, Karina Longworth, Maitland McDonagh, Troy Patterson, Nicolas Rapold, Lisa Rosman, Nick Schager, Phil de Semlyen, Matthew Singer, Anna Smith, S. James Snyder.  RECOMMENDED: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🌏 The 50 best foreign films of all time🤘 The 40 best cult movies of all time📹 The 66 best documentaries of all time

Streaming is hard. That seems like a misnomer, given that practically every movie you could ever want to watch is now a few clicks away. But that’s the issue: knowing precisely what’s out there, and where to find it, can become overwhelming. Here, we’re doing the hard work for you, by cutting through the clutter and getting straight to the best movies available to watch right now – not just at home, but in theaters as well. We will update this guide regularly, so you can always find something to watch. Here’s the latest and greatest available right now. What to Watch Now: New Movie Releases In Cinemas and Theaters This Month Sinners Michael B Jordan is the Michael Jordan of playing Michael B Jordan in this spectacular horror-thriller, pulling double duty as twins in the 1930s American South returning home after a prison stint and discovering malevolent forces (vampires, perchance?) waiting for them. Director Ryan Coogler, meanwhile, solidifies his case as perhaps the best big-time filmmaker of his generation.   In theaters April 18  Warfare Ray Mendoza, a longtime Hollywood military advisor, and Civil War’s Alex Garland co-direct this matter-of-fact depiction of Mendoza’s own experiences in the Iraq War. It stars a who’s-who of rising young actors, including Will Poulter, May December’s Charles Melton and Shogun’s Cosmo Jarvis, but this ain’t The Dirty Dozen – its portrayal of modern combat is so bluntly realistic, it barely qualifies as cinematic. In theaters A

In just a few years, Apple TV+ has amassed a decent selection of original movies, but where it’s really excelled is television. Since launching in late 2019, the streaming service has produced several shows and miniseries that could be deemed phenomenons, including Ted Lasso, Severance and Slow Horses. Narrowing down what it does best can be difficult, though: in just those aforementioned highlights, you’ll find a heartwarming comedy, a sci-fi mystery and a spy thriller. In truth, the platform is simply loaded with highly bingeable content spread across several genres and formats. And with buzzy series like The Studio, Lucky and Murderbot on the way, the slate is just getting more crowded. So what’s the most deserving of your precious time? Here are 20 of our current favourites. Recommended: 🍏 The 25 best movies to watch on Apple TV+🗓 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)📺 The 101 best TV shows of all-time

When it first launched, Hulu was a go-to streamer for classic television shows. But the streaming service actually beat many of its competitors to the punch when it comes to original content, producing pop-culture news show The Morning After and a Morgan Spurlock-directed docuseries two years before Netflix got credit for ‘changing the game’ with House of Cards. If those early efforts are mostly forgotten now, Hulu etched made history on a bigger scale in 2017, when The Handmaid’s Tale became the first streaming series to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama. Now owned by Disney, it’s continued to churn out award-winning, pioneering and creatively adventurous series, either under the Hulu brand name or as the exclusive hub for the FX network. Here are 15 of the best to watch now.  Recommended: 🇭 The best movies to watch on Hulu right now😏 The best shows to watch on Prime Video right now🍎 The best shows to watch on Apple TV+🇳 The best Netflix original series to binge🗓 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)📺 The 101 best TV shows of all-time

Television has been around for 70 years, but only in the last two decades has it earned true respect as an artistic medium. Up to that point, elitists referred to TV as ‘the idiot box’ or ‘the boob tube,’ and if you worked in it, you were either a hack or an upstart hoping to make the leap into the more dignified world of movies. Was its poor reputation deserved? Sure, there were blips of brilliance between The Ed Sullivan Show and The Sopranos, but by and large, the garbage outweighed the gold. Maybe it’s unfair, but the fact that it was all being beamed directly into our living rooms made the dreck more noticeable.  That’s all changed. Television has nudged film out from the center of popular culture, to the point that some of cinema’s truest believers – Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh – are making movies specifically for the small screen. The shift may have started with HBO and The Sopranos, but the advent of streaming has made it so that hundreds of new shows are now continually flipping the script every few years, if not months. But that doesn’t mean everything before 1999 is pure dross. While this list is dominated by 21st century programs, there are hundreds of shows that deserve credit for pushing TV forward into its current golden age, and chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult. So we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries. Even then, it proved to b

Who’s ready to laugh? Netflix, apparently, as its May 2025 slate is loaded with comedies, some involving heavy-hitters. The month kicks off with a Tina Fey limited series also starring Steve Carrell, Colman Domingo and Will Forte, then continues with a darkly comic thriller led by Julianne Moore, an apparently deranged anthology series from stand-up Tom Segura, Vince Vaughn playing opposite Lorraine Bracco and Susan Sarandon, and the final season of Nick Kroll’s long-running animated series, Big Mouth. If you’re more in the mood for drama, don’t worry, there’s plenty of that, too. Here are the nine new movies and shows that we’re most excited about hitting Netflix this month. Recommended: 💻 The best Netflix original series to binge📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)   The Four Seasons Tina Fey remakes the 1981 Alan Alda comedy about three middle-aged couples whose friendship dynamic is rattled when one of them divorces. Fey, who also stars, frames the eight-episode miniseries around a series of group vacations, which sounds like her way of getting Netflix to fund some expensive getaways for her and her friends – but when the friends are Steve Carrell, Colman Domingo, Will Forte and Kerri Kenney-Silver, it’s probably still worth watching. Premieres May 1 Britain and the Blitz Just when you thought you’d consumed everything about the bombing of Britain during World War II comes this six-episode docuseries, featuring first-person testimony from survivors and

Gentlemen, rev your Aston Martins and start shaking those martinis, because a new James Bond is on the horizon. Menthol smoke has not yet started billowing out of MGM Studios – the traditional indication that the next 007 has been chosen – with Daniel Craig’s likely replacement still a mystery. What does this mean for the future of the iconic British spy series and its upcoming 26th instalment? Information is limited, but here’s what we know so far.  What does Amazon MGM Studios’ takeover mean for the next James Bond? After months of rumour and speculation, James Bond finally got a new boss in February 2025. Not M, but Amazon MGM Studios who sealed a deal with 007’s producers, Eon’s Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, to take creative control of the franchise.  Broccoli and Wilson will remain co-owners of James Bond but crucially, will step back from controlling the future direction or execution of the franchise. ‘With the conclusion of No Time to Die and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects,’ Broccoli said in a statement.So what does it all mean for 007? We’re probably a step closer to a release date for Bond 26 and the announcement of a new James Bond to star in it. Maybe a radical change of direction for the whole franchise, too, with immediate speculation that Amazon will look to spin their expensive new IP into the kind of shared universe storytelling that Disney pursued with Lucasfilm and Star Wars after its takeover. Is a

Mike White’s HBO sensation The White Lotus is back and not since Chevy Chase’s ’80s heyday have vacations gone wrong quite this spectacularly.Second 3 sees another party of unsuspecting but largely fairly deserving wealthies disembarking for a week or so of passive-aggression, skullduggery, and in the odd case, death. Friendships will fray, cobras will be unleashed and uptight westerners will unravel in the serene surrounds of a Thai resort. And we’ll all be there every step of the way. As with previous seasons the location is the story. This time White is taking us further east: to Thailand and a White Lotus resort where devices must be popped in a bag and the healing power of spiritual therapy allowed to do its thing. Season 1 took us to Hawaii, season 2 introduced the Sicilian White Lotus. Now it’s time for a tour of White Lotus Thailand and its ultra-luxe locations. Photograph: Fabio Lovino/HBO(Left to right) Christian Friedel, Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb and Lek Patravadi in season 3 of ‘The White Lotus’ Where is White Lotus season 3 filmed? The third season takes its cast – Michelle Monaghan, Parker Posey, Carrie Coon, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Jason Isaacs, Cate Le Bon et al – to The White Lotus Resort in Thailand. According to Mike White, it was nearly set in another a couple of thousand miles to the east. ‘Originally, [Thailand] was kind of a stalking horse because I wanted to shoot in Japan,’ says the showrunner. ‘I've spent more time there and I jus

The devastating wildfires that have been sweeping through suburbs of Los Angeles since Tuesday continue to threaten life and livelihoods across the city—as well as inflicting enormous destruction of property.     In a city famous as a headquarters for film and TV production, the impact has been devastating, with celebrity enclaves like Malibu and Pacific Palisades hit especially hard by the blaze. Studios have been evacuated, and TV productions and award season events deferred. Here’s what it all means for the world of pop culture and moviemaking. 1. Are L.A.’s cinemas and studios threatened by the wildfires?  As the Sunset Fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday evening, the TCL Chinese Theatre—popularly known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre—and the current home of the Oscars, the Dolby Theatre, were included in the evacuation zone. The blaze was largely extinguished overnight, however, and the evacuation warning lifted.   The L.A. premieres for Pamela Anderson’s award-nominated The Last Showgirl, Unstoppable, Wolf Man and the long-awaited second season of Apple TV+’s Severance were called off. Even a New York premiere—of Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz’s Netflix action-comedy Back in Action—was cancelled too. Meanwhile, popular studio attractions were also closed during the week, due to the proximity of the fires. Universal Studios closed its gates to the public on Wednesday, before reopening today. Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal CityWalk will be

Well, here we are. America has arrived at the moment of truth – the most important presidential election in our lifetime. Sure, they seem to say that about every election, but in this case, it’s probably true, given that democracy itself is seemingly hanging in the balance. Whether or not the results actually end up confirming the country’s slide into totalitarianism, it’s a big deal regardless.   Need to prepare yourself? These movies should help put things in perspective. Not all of them are about presidential politics per se, but they are focused on the democratic process and the machinations and maneuverings that accompany it. We’d like to say they’ll calm your inevitably frazzled nerves, but the truth is, if you’re making a movie about an election in the United States, it’s probably lined with a good bit of cynicism. But as you’ll see, cynicism can be a good thing, especially if you’re hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time😬 The best thriller movies of all-time🤔 The 24 best movies based on true stories Photograph: Warner Bros. 1. All the President’s Men (1976) Ah, the days when committing crimes could actually bring down a presidency. Watergate was barely out of the headlines when Alan Pakula turned the most famous act of reportage in American political history into the greatest journalism procedural ever made. Embellishing little, Pakula sticks to the facts – and to the newsroom of The Washington Post – and

Horror, fittingly, is the unkillable genre. Just when you think it’s peaked – the exploitation-heavy ’70s, the slasher ’80s, the post-ironic ’90s – it gets a new leash of life and lurches back at you, claw hammer in hand. Like the transmogrifying alien in The Thing, there’s something in its bloodstream that keeps its scares relevant, keeps them reflecting our fears back at us in ways that are too damn frightening to resist. Halloween, however, requires a very specific kind of horror film: it’s a time when spooks and scares, ghosts and ghouls take precedence over subtext and smarts. With that, and the genre’s recent purple patch in mind, here’s a few films from the last year or two that will scare you witless this week and enhance that gothic vibe. (If you’ve got younger viewers in the house, give this more family-friendly list a go instead.) Our pick of the top Halloween movies for 2024 Photograph: A24 1. Heretic Hands up: who had Hugh Grant down as this year’s answer to the Jigsaw Killer? The erstwhile romcom softboi shows new, darker shades in a fiendishly clever horror-thriller with big ideas and even bigger shocks. It’s not Grant’s first villainous turn – hello, Daniel Cleaver and that cannibal in Cloud Atlas – but when his seemingly hospitable would-be convert lulls a pair of guileless Mormon missionaries into a hellish labyrinthine, it’s a ride you really don’t want to miss. In theaters now Photograph: Signature Entertainment 2. Terrifier 3 Who knew there was such

You’ve carved a pumpkin – looks great, top work – you’ve stocked up on candy and decked out the front porch like it’s the set of a Tim Burton movie. But there may be one variable still lingering over your Halloween: what to watch with the little ones? What’s needed is something that offers kids a frisson of spookiness and some gentle scares, but nothing that’s going to freak them out and require you to spend three hours sitting by their bedside reassuring them that Pazuzu isn’t real. Oh, and something that’s genuinely fun for grown-ups too. Here’s our pick of ten Halloween faves that hit that ghoulish sweet spot. (Oh, and grown-ups should head for this more R-rated list.) The top Halloween movies for kids Photograph: Disney 1. Coco (Disney+) Give your Halloween a celebratory vibe with an effervescent Pixar animation that sends its young musical hero into the afterlife for a race-against-the-clock adventure featuring skeletons as far as the eyeball can see. No culture does death with as much vibrancy and joy as Mexico, and this riff on the Day of the Dead celebrations is a suitably kaleidoscopic treatment of the great beyond. The actual Día de Muerto falls on Saturday, November 2, so what better time to cue it up? Photograph: Disney+Frankenweenie 2. Frankenweenie (Disney+) Nothing’s worse than the loss of a beloved family pet. Enter Tim Burton’s stop motion animation to raise the spooky possibility of reincarnating the little guy with the help of a massive electrical cha

On Netflix, movies and TV shows come and go almost daily. Sometimes, you may not even know something is there to stream before it’s too late. In other cases, you might be halfway through a series, or planning to watch a movie at the end of the week, and then poof: gone. Don’t get caught unaware. Below, you’ll find a full list of everything leaving Netflix in November 2024, with our six picks for the flicks you must watch before they cycle off, including Tom Hanks as a grumpy old man, Tom Cruise as a live-action video game character, Ryan Gosling as a real American hero, and Keanu Reeves as Johnny Utah. Get watching, and live without regret. Recommended: 🎬 The 35 best movies on Netflix right now🇳 The 44 best Netflix original series to binge🦚 The 20 best movies to watch on Peacock right now🎥 The 25 best movies on HBO and Max right now Photograph: Dennis Mong/Sony Pictures A Man Called Otto Tom Hanks plays against type as a gravelly-voiced old grouch who just wants to be left alone long enough to hang himself and join his wife in the afterlife. Of course, his meddling neighbours won’t allow that to happen, and the movie becomes just the sort of hard-to-resist heartstring-tugger you expect to see Tom Hanks in.  Leaves Nov 5   Photograph: Warner Bros."Edge of Tomorrow" Edge of Tomorrow ‘Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day’ is the easiest pitch for this entertaining sci-fi blockbuster. Tom Cruise is a post-apocalyptic bureaucrat conscripted to fight against the alien hord

Sports are the pinnacle of human drama, and the Olympics are the peak of sporting events. Logically, then, movies about the Olympics are some of the most stirring, thrilling and plainly inspirational you’ll find. We’re not saying they’re the best sports movies necessarily – we’ve got a whole other list for that – but when it comes to whipping viewers into a patriotic froth, the best films about the global games do it better than almost anything else. Of course, there is a dark side to the Olympics, both socially and historically, as reflected in top-shelf movies like Munich and Foxcatcher. But for the sake of this list, and stoking excitement for the upcoming Paris games, we’re sticking with the thrilling, the soul-stirring and the inspirational movies to tackle the Olympics – in both their summer and snowier guises. Here are nine of our favourites. Recommended: ⚾ The 50 best sports movies of all-time🥊 The 10 best boxing movies of all-time📹 The 66 best documentaries of all-time Zátopek (2021) Every country has its Olympics heroes. In the Czech Republic it’s Emil Zátopek, a long-distance runner who defied the odds to win triple gold at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. As charted in this stirring and colourful biopic, Zátopek (Václav Neužil) had the kind of mischievous eccentricity and drive you probably need to run endlessly in giant loops – and a romantic spirit that manifests in a touching romance with Dana, a champion javelin thrower. Well worth, ahem, tracking do

Rejoice, film fans – August is over! The end of summer is famously regarded as an end-of-summer dumping ground for major studios, and this year seemed particularly dismal. But with September comes slightly cooler temperatures and definitively movies as award season begins in earnest. This month’s slate is light on blockbusters or marquee releases but contains several smaller affairs you may end up hearing about come Oscar time, including Celine Song’s quietly heartbreaking modern romance ‘Past Lives’, the intensely intimate ‘Passages’ and Pedro Almodovar’s Pedro Pascal-and-Ethan Hawke-starring ‘queer Western’, Strange ‘Way of Life’. And hey, if you just want to see Denzel Washington shoot some bad guys, there’s always ‘The Equalizer 3’!     Photograph: MUBI Passages A long-tenured French couple (Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw) have their relationship thrown into chaos when the former has an affair with a younger woman (Adèle Exarchopoulos) in this typically small-yet-intense drama from director Ira Sachs. Having previously set his films in New York, Sachs utilises the Parisian backdrop to such a degree it becomes a character unto itself.  In cinemas Sep 1  Foto: Cortesía Konnichiwa Festival The First Slam Dunk Basketball anime style, Takehiko Inoue’s adaptation of his own mega-selling manga series ‘Slam Dunk’ is 20 years in the making and currently smashing box-office records in Japan and South Korea. It arrives on these shores as the fifth highest grossing anime e

Already a smash hit in the US, all eight episodes of ‘The Bear’ have finally arrived on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland. The FX dramedy, set in the kitchen of a blue-collar Chicago sandwich shop and starring the about-to-be-huge Jeremy Allen White, has generated a tonne of buzz since its first dropped on Hulu across the Pond.Created by Christopher Storer, it centres on an up-and-coming chef who inherits his family’s struggling greasy spoon following the sudden death of his brother. It’s earned critical raves for its breakout cast and sharply observed writing, which manages to convey a lot about grief and masculinity despite dealing with some not particularly articulate characters. And it’s already been renewed for a second season. So if you want to keep up with the zeitgeist, you’ll probably want to jump in as soon as it lands on the streamer. And if you’re wondering if it’s worth the four-hour investment, here are the five best reasons to watch. Photograph: Matt Dinerstein/FXWhite with Liza Colon-Zayas as Tina 1. Jeremy Allen White is basically a young Nicolas Cage First and foremost, ‘The Bear’ heralds the arrival of Jeremy Allen White. Okay, perhaps that’s a weird thing to say, given that he just wrapped up a ten-year stint as a lead on the US version of Shameless. But in his first true star vehicle, White shines as Carmen ‘Carmy’ Bezatto, aka Bear, a hot-shit young chef with hypnotic eyes and a wounded demeanour. White spent two weeks in culinary school to prepare for the

Damien Chazelle is returning to La La Land… But the director’s new movie is about a much different Los Angeles than that of his 2016 musical. In his upcoming Babylon, the 37-year-old filmmaker travels back to the Golden Age of Hollywood, a particularly grand and debauched time in the entertainment industry. It’s Chazelle’s first movie since 2018’s Neil Armstrong biopic First Man and the first he’s written since La La Land made him the youngest Best Director winner in Oscar history. And according to Chazelle, it’s his most ambitious project yet. ‘It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve done,’ he tells Vanity Fair. ‘Just the logistics of it, the number of characters, the scale of the set pieces, the span of time that the movie charts – it all conspired to make it particularly challenging, but it was a challenge that was pretty exciting to take on.’ Chazelle says he’s had the idea for Babylon in his head since even before his breakthrough film, 2014’s Whiplash, but didn’t yet have the clout to do something so ‘massive’. He finally started working on the script in 2018, but then the pandemic stalled production. After screening teaser footage for a convention audience earlier this year, Babylon is finally nearing release – and it looks like another Oscar contender. Here’s everything we know about Babylon.   Photo Credit: Scott Garfield| Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in Babylon from Paramount Pictures. When does Babylon come out? It hits theatres in select US cities on Decemb